a young Dane who wished to go from the Koyukuk
diggings to the diggings at Candle Creek on the Seward Peninsula, and
him we were willing to feed in return for his assistance on the trail.
The supplies had been carefully calculated for the journey, the
toboggans were already loaded, and we waited but a break in the cold
weather to start.

Our course from Bettles would lead us sixty-five miles farther down the
Koyukuk to the mouth of the Alatna. The visit to the native village and
the burial of the poor fellow frozen to death would take us ten miles
farther down than that, and we would return to the Alatna mouth. Then
the way would lie for fifty miles or so up that stream, and then over a
portage, across to the Kobuk River, which we should descend to its mouth
in Kotzebue Sound; the whole distance being about five hundred miles
through a very little travelled country. We learned indeed, that it had
been travelled but once this winter, and that on the first snow. It was
thought at Bettles that we might possibly procure some supplies at a
newly established mission of the Society of Friends about half-way down
the Kobuk River, but there was no certainty about it, and we must carry
with us enough man-food to take us to salt water. Our supply of dog fish
we might safely count upon replenishing from the natives on the Kobuk.
Another thing that caused some thought was the supply of small money.
There was no silver and no currency except large bills on the Koyukuk,
and we should need money in small sums to buy fish with. So the agent
weighed out a number of little packets of gold-dust carefully sealed up
in stout writing-paper like medicine powders, some worth a dollar, some
worth two dollars, the value written on the face, and we found them
readily accepted by the natives and very convenient. Two years later I
heard of some of those packets, unbroken, still current on the Kobuk.

At last, on the 26th of January, we got away. The thermometer stood only
a few degrees above -50 deg. when we left, but the barometer had been
falling slowly for a couple of days, and I was convinced the cold spell
was over. With our three teams and four men we made quite a little
expedition, but dogs and men were alike soft, and for the first two days
the travel was laborious and slow; then came milder weather and better
going.

[Sidenote: THE KOYUKUK "TOWNS" OF '98]

We passed the two ruined huts of Peavey, the roofs crushed by the
superincumbent